Every New Year Is an Invitation

Leadership, Fresh Starts, and Lunar New Year

I love each New Year the calendar gives us.

January 1. Lunar New Year. Rosh Hashanah. Nowruz. I take them all as opportunities to start fresh. Not because I need endless do-overs—but because I love taking a moment to say: you don’t have to keep going in this particular direction.

Lunar New Year always lands for me as a reset without the pressure. It doesn’t come with resolutions or goal-setting or the insistence that you should already be better by now. It arrives a few weeks into the year, once reality has had a chance to assert itself, and reminds us that beginnings don’t expire.

That matters for leadership.

Most leadership advice treats January as the only acceptable starting line. Miss it, and you’re supposedly behind. Lunar New Year offers a chance to see progress as cyclical.

A fresh start in leadership doesn’t have to be dramatic. Fresh starts are rarely about adding more. They’re about aligning what you’re already doing with what you actually value.

This is especially true if the start of the year has felt heavy. If you came in tired. If the world feels loud and uncertain. If your leadership has been more reactive than reflective lately. Lunar New Year doesn’t demand that you fix everything. It invites you to begin again from where you are.

I’m especially drawn to the way Lunar New Year honors intention over urgency. There’s attention to symbolism—this is not only the Year of the Horse, but also a Fire year. The Fire Horse is said to usher in a year of bold decisions and rapid transformation. I can’t think of a better reason to celebrate.

A fresh start means learning from the past—even the very recent past, the last few weeks, the start of 2026—and choosing what comes next with care and courage.

So if you’re craving a reset right now, consider this your permission slip. You don’t have to wait for the perfect moment or the next calendar page. You can choose one shift that brings you closer to the leader you want to be—and begin there.

That’s more than enough.

What’s one fresh start you’re willing to claim this season—at work or in how you lead?

I share reflections like this every Monday and gather them into one monthly email—subscribe if you’d rather read them over coffee than chase them online, and thanks for choosing to lead with love.